Future Manifestor of Abundance
Everybody has a story like this one, because everybody remembers wanting something when they were little -- and whether or not they ever got it, even if they had to grow up and buy it themselves.
I once attended a New-Agey class on “manifesting abundance.” We were asked to recall our first memory of wanting some physical item -- where and what it was, who else was there, and whether we ultimately managed to possess the object of our desire. The idea was that that core experience had set up expectations and beliefs that were still operating in our lives. Makes sense if you think about it, especially once you think back.
As it happened, my recollection didn't bode especially well for a Future Manifestor of Abundance -- though as a temper to my natural childhood avarice, it couldn’t have been more effective. Temper, you’ll see, being the operative word.
Unlike the baby-doll carriage incident, this time there were no whispering inner calls of a higher nature to shut out, no innocent toddlers standing between me and my desire. Just my grandmother and me wandering in the glamorous, glorious new world of a downtown department store, happy and carefree. That is until I spied it: the thing, the thing, the one object I suddenly needed more than any other, the one that would make my blossoming little life whole and complete. All I can say today about what happened next is: my grandmother should have had backup.
I really don’t know why I write this, for all the mortification it involves sharing. Because the item that I suddenly could not live without, the object tempting me to the point of madness behind a gleaming glass case -- and hang that old baby-doll carriage -- was a whitish (I’ll say), broad-brimmed straw hat trimmed with a black ribbon that fell in two, twin-pointed streams down the back. If you are possibly as old as I or thereabouts, you might just recall childhood images of young girls in old-time outfits wearing the kind of hat I mean, as they skipped alongside a large hoop, wrangling it joyously down the street with a stick. (I believe they called it "the good ol' days.")
I don’t recall the exact source of my, ah, inspiration. Can it really be called that, though -- can inspiration be the right word when the result was a distinctly unladylike, glorious if not glamorous, hurricane-force tantrum, a fit that forced my doting grandmother to cough up thirty dollars, a hefty and even bloodsucking sum in early 1960s? Is there any point to being belatedly embarrassed by your outer child?
Why did it have to be such an absurd object -- why did it take me until I got home, giant hat box in tow, to look around and realize I had no giant hoop, let alone old-time outfit, or even any need of one? We had television, for God’s sake! And hat or no, wrangling a giant hoop down our street would only get me honked and yelled at. Is the absurdity of the prized object -- its comical distance from our real life, the sheer abandonment of reason -- all part of it? Designed perhaps to help us better recall the incident when we’re older and sitting in a circle on the carpet in some New-Agey meditate-your-way-to-wealth class? (Oh, I saw you there . . .)
My mini-me’s triumph of manifestation, at my pained grandmother’s expense, lasted only as long as it took to get to my front door and look into my mother’s eyes. By this time, the parade of my sibling arrivals (emphasis on rivals) was well under way, and I had yet to grasp just what that meant for my family. By the time my mother finished dispensing my dose of fiscal reality -- I didn’t need much -- I couldn’t even look at that hat. Why they couldn’t take it back, take it all back, tantrum and all, I didn’t understand. Instead the thing was never denied me. And it never left the box on the top shelf of my parents’ bedroom closet, pushed far back.
But I never forgot it was there.
I once attended a New-Agey class on “manifesting abundance.” We were asked to recall our first memory of wanting some physical item -- where and what it was, who else was there, and whether we ultimately managed to possess the object of our desire. The idea was that that core experience had set up expectations and beliefs that were still operating in our lives. Makes sense if you think about it, especially once you think back.
As it happened, my recollection didn't bode especially well for a Future Manifestor of Abundance -- though as a temper to my natural childhood avarice, it couldn’t have been more effective. Temper, you’ll see, being the operative word.
Unlike the baby-doll carriage incident, this time there were no whispering inner calls of a higher nature to shut out, no innocent toddlers standing between me and my desire. Just my grandmother and me wandering in the glamorous, glorious new world of a downtown department store, happy and carefree. That is until I spied it: the thing, the thing, the one object I suddenly needed more than any other, the one that would make my blossoming little life whole and complete. All I can say today about what happened next is: my grandmother should have had backup.
I really don’t know why I write this, for all the mortification it involves sharing. Because the item that I suddenly could not live without, the object tempting me to the point of madness behind a gleaming glass case -- and hang that old baby-doll carriage -- was a whitish (I’ll say), broad-brimmed straw hat trimmed with a black ribbon that fell in two, twin-pointed streams down the back. If you are possibly as old as I or thereabouts, you might just recall childhood images of young girls in old-time outfits wearing the kind of hat I mean, as they skipped alongside a large hoop, wrangling it joyously down the street with a stick. (I believe they called it "the good ol' days.")
I don’t recall the exact source of my, ah, inspiration. Can it really be called that, though -- can inspiration be the right word when the result was a distinctly unladylike, glorious if not glamorous, hurricane-force tantrum, a fit that forced my doting grandmother to cough up thirty dollars, a hefty and even bloodsucking sum in early 1960s? Is there any point to being belatedly embarrassed by your outer child?
Why did it have to be such an absurd object -- why did it take me until I got home, giant hat box in tow, to look around and realize I had no giant hoop, let alone old-time outfit, or even any need of one? We had television, for God’s sake! And hat or no, wrangling a giant hoop down our street would only get me honked and yelled at. Is the absurdity of the prized object -- its comical distance from our real life, the sheer abandonment of reason -- all part of it? Designed perhaps to help us better recall the incident when we’re older and sitting in a circle on the carpet in some New-Agey meditate-your-way-to-wealth class? (Oh, I saw you there . . .)
My mini-me’s triumph of manifestation, at my pained grandmother’s expense, lasted only as long as it took to get to my front door and look into my mother’s eyes. By this time, the parade of my sibling arrivals (emphasis on rivals) was well under way, and I had yet to grasp just what that meant for my family. By the time my mother finished dispensing my dose of fiscal reality -- I didn’t need much -- I couldn’t even look at that hat. Why they couldn’t take it back, take it all back, tantrum and all, I didn’t understand. Instead the thing was never denied me. And it never left the box on the top shelf of my parents’ bedroom closet, pushed far back.
But I never forgot it was there.
